In the history book of Democratic politics, the chapter titled "Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory" is a long one. Years from now, CNN regular and Democratic consultant Hilary Rosen may be prominently featured in it. After all, she may have accomplished the virtually impossible: making Mr. and Mrs. Romney seem sympathetic. Twenty years […]

"Conservative commentators." "Commerce." "New Deal." Only if you pretend Barack Obama never uttered those three phases this week can you manufacture a controversy in which the President supposedly questioned the authority of the Supreme Court to overturn the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA). But in the hands of his Republican opponents and a lazy and […]

Three top officials of the General Services Administration (GSA) were ousted Monday in advance of an Inspector General's report documenting a lavish spending spree at a 2010 agency conference in Las Vegas. But while White House chief of staff Jacob Lew reported that President Obama was "outraged by the excessive spending, questionable dealings with contractors, […]

As the battle over health care raged in the summer of 2009, President Obama made a very specific promise about what would become the Affordable Care Act. "When I say if you have your plan and you like it," Obama explained that June, "or you have a doctor and you like your doctor, that you […]

Barack Obama was 10 years old when legendary activist and organizer Saul Alinsky died in 1972. Nevertheless, right-wingers are frothing at the mouth at the discovery posthumously unearthed by the late Andrew Breitbart that then Illinois State Senator Obama was part of panel discussion after a 1998 play about Alinsky. But conservatives' fixation on the […]

For years, conservatives have warned that rapidly rising health care costs require the United States to repeal the Affordable Care Act, gut Medicaid and privatize Medicare. Now, the American Enterprise Institute cheerfully insists, the recent slowdown in that rate of the growth argues for precisely the same Republican policies. But far from happily revealing new […]

If nothing else, 2011 was the Year of the Great Republican Lie about taxes. Desperate to preserve low rates for the richest Americans, GOP leaders pretended tax cuts increase government revenues, pay for themselves and magically spur supposed "job creators." On Sunday, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor showed Americans can expect more of the same […]

Remember when conservatives raged after President George W. Bush issued messages marking the celebration of Kwanzaa each and every year he was in the White House? Neither do they. That's why the right-wing blogosphere is apoplectic that Barack Obama followed Bush's lead in recognizing a holiday many African-Americans celebrate each year. As he did in […]

He called for rationing Medicare, replacing it with an underfunded voucher system that would dramatically shift costs to elderly Americans. He proposed repealing the Affordable Care Act, slashing Medicaid by $1.4 trillion over the next decade and turning what's left over to the states as block grants. By 2021, his budget would leave up to […]

In December 2008, Vice President Dick Cheney delivered a stern warning to Senate Republicans opposed to President Bush's proposed bailout of the U.S. auto industry then teetering on collapse. "If we don't do this," Cheney cautioned his GOP colleagues behind closed doors, "we will be known as the party of Herbert Hoover forever." Now in […]